Emerson's Wife and Other Western StoriesKelly, Florence Finch
General
Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories
Kelly, Florence Finch
Western stories
"It is a bear!" he cried as we saw its shaggy bulk awkwardly climbing
the slope between two clumps of bushes. "No, by Jove, it's got hands
and feet! Now, what in the--"
Then the thing half turned toward us, and we saw that it had a man's
head and face, covered with hair and beard.
"Good God! It's Henry Moulton!" cried the Artist. "Moulton!
Moulton! Come back here! What's the matter with you!"
At the sound of his name the man sprang to his feet, facing us. The
bearskin which wrapped his body slipped down and left him entirely
nude. In an instant he dropped upon all fours again, drew the skin
over him and shambled away.
We turned our staring eyes upon each other, and there was no need to
speak the appalling thought that was in both our minds. With one
accord we plied our whips and drove our unwilling and terrified horses
in the direction he had taken. We came near enough to see that he was
digging among the dry leaves for acorns, and that his beard and mouth
were defiled with earth, and full of fragments of leaves and acorn
shells. But as soon as he saw us he darted off into the thick
underbrush, whither we could not follow him.
We hurried on to his shack, where the rest of the party had already
arrived, and the men all started back at once with ropes and lariats
for Moulton's capture and garments for his covering.
The cabin was a rough affair, made of logs and chinked with fir
boughs, and having an earthen floor. A bunk made of rough timbers
and mattressed with twigs of fur was covered with some blankets and
clothing, tossed into heaps. Under the blankets at the head of the
bunk I found a little pile of books--a Shakespeare, a volume of
Emerson's essays, Thoreau's "Walden," and a well-worn "Iliad," in the
Greek text.
"How queer," said one of the women, as she looked curiously at the
volumes, "that an ignorant creature such as this crazy mountaineer
must be should have such books as these in his cabin! They must have
been left here by some tourist, and he has put them away and kept
them. It shows how much respect even the ignorant have for learning."
Some torn scraps of paper were scattered over the floor, and I picked
them all up and tried to piece them together.
When the men returned with the lunatic he was quiet and obedient,
except when they tried to substitute proper clothing for his bearskin.
Against this he fought with all his strength, striking, scratching,
and kicking with hands and feet, snapping and biting viciously, and
all the time either roaring with fury, or, when they succeeded in
pulling the hide a little away from him, groaning, shrieking, and
writhing as if he were being flayed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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